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•Morocorr mkxution mr chait

(ANSI and BO TEST CHART No. 2)

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(716) 482 - 0X0 - PhoiM
(7t6) 288 - SaaS - Tm

THE ATONEMENT

BY THE REV.

JAMES STALKER, D.D.,

ROmaOR OF CHURCH HISTORT AND CHRISnAN ITRICS IM IBB
UNmD FRKR CHURCH COLLIOI, ABBROUM

LENA ALGUIRE MacKAY
MEMORIAL LIBRARY

N9

796

GLEBE UNITED CHURCH

TORONTO

THE UPPER CANADA TRACT SOCIETY

LONDON : HODDER AND STOUGHTON

UMwn noTHiBs, uianDk pnomn, womio ado lomdom.

830650

THE TRUSTBB8
Of

THE McDonald of fbrintosh trust,

AT WHOSE REQUEST AND

UNDER WHOSE AUSPICES THESE LECTURES

WERE DELIVERED

AT INVERNESS, OCTOBER 6tH,

7TB, AND 8th, 1908.

PREFACE

TT is with extreme diffidence that I

venture to appear in print as a

writer on this subject Indeed, had not

an external call come, I do not think I

should have broken silence. But, when

thus called, I could not decline to do

what in me lay to add volume to the

cuitent which is flowing so strongly in

the direction of a revived interest in

this doctrine.

I have to confess that I have myself
been slow to learn at this point, the
earlier phases of Christ's life absorbing irv
attention. Yet I have been always coit-

«u

▼fil

FBBFACB

sdoua of the proximity of facts and truths
in this direction, still to be appreciated,
which an access of new experience might
at any moment invest with commanding
interest This is exactly the state of
mind of many in our generation ; and to
these it will be no drawback that I have
felt keenly, and stfll feel, the difficulties
inherent in the view I have expounded.
The plah of this course of lectures is
very simple. First, I go straight to the
New Testament, as the fountain and
authority, yet not so much to collect its
statements as to find out the position
of the death of Christ in its presentation
of Christianity as a whole ; and. therefore,
the first lecture is entitled The' New
Testament Situation. Then, as the
light in which the people of the New
Testament saw the death of Christ
depended on the education of the Old

PRBFAOB is

Testament, I go back to study the insti-
tutions in which the death of Christ was
foreshadowed; hence the second lecture
is called The Old Testament Prepara-
tion. Lastly, as we are not to believe
anything merely because it is delivered
to us by any authority, however divine,
but are bound to penetrate to the inner
reasonableness, which will be all the
greater the diviner any doctrine is, I
endeavour to harmonize the truth with
the ideas and sympathies of the present
time in the third lecture, which is, there-
fore, called The Modern Justification.

Aberdeen, October 6, 1908.

CONTENTS

I

TH« NKW TKSTAMBNT SITUATION

nam
I

II

THl OLD TESTAMENT PREPARATION

45

III

THE MODERN JUSTIFICATION .

. 89

[t

pr-Tf - r.f— -—^c-r-rT,^

THE NEW TESTAMENT
SITUATION

%

I

THE NEW TESTAMENT
SITUATION

A YOUNG German theologian has
•^*- recently published a work of
remarkable learning dealing with the
literature on the Life of Christ produced
by his countrymen during the last
hundred years.' The aim of that litera-
ture has been to get back to the figure
of Jesus as He actually existed in the
flesh and, by putting aside the accretions
of tradition and the accumulations of
* Schweitzer : Von Rtimarus tu Wrtie.

4 THE NEW TBOTAMBNT SITUATION

dogma, to ascertain precisely who He
was. what He did, and what He said;
and the cry of " Back to Christ" has been'
loudly repeated on our own as weU as
on the opposite side of the German
Ocean. But the scholar referred to
concludes his survey with a confession
that, in his opinion, the travail of a
hundred years has failed in its object ;
not because it is now impossible, by
the methods of historical inquiry, to
determine who or what Jesus was, but
because, when He is found. He is not
the person we had thought We were
seeking a teacher and a guide for our-
selves, to whom nothing human should
be alien and who should be in immediate
touch with the aspirations and the
problems of the present hour ; but what
we do find is one who is nineteen
centuries old, who lives and moves and

THE NEW TESTAMENT SITUATION 5

has his being in an Oriental atmosphere,
and who will not stay with us when
we seek to detain him and have him
as our own, but, escaping our grasp,
reverts to that world of which he was
a portion.

I cannot help thinking that there is
a good deal of truth in this, and that
at least it is a fair criticism of certain
methods of studying the Life of Christ
much affected at present by the author's
fellow-countrymen.

In that life there were two elements
inextricably mingled— the one tempoial
the other spiritual, the one transient the
other eternal— and it is from the difficulty
of distinguishing and reconciling these that
the problems of the subject chiefly arise.
On the one hand, Jesus was limited by
space and time. He was born of a
woman and had to relate Himself to the

« THE NEW TESTAMENT SITUATION

conditioiw of a certain age of the world ;
He had to incorporate His own life with
Jewish history and take up His career
in a shape determined by the preceding
course of the Kingdom of God ; the lace
to which He belonged was expecting a
Messiah, who had been promised to the
patriarchs and predicted by the prophets,
and this predetermined the r6U in which
He had to appear. On the other hand,
He was undrcumscribed by space and
time; He had come from God and He
dwelt in eternity; He was destined to
be not only the Messiah of the Jews
but the Saviour of the world, having
relations equally intimate with all sections
of the human race.

Under the name of the Self-conscious-
ness of Jesus it has been common abroad
to discuss the relationship of Jesus to this
twofold fiA5p— that is to say, to ascertain

THB NEW TESTAMENT SITUATION 7

what He knew Himself to be and what
He was aware He had come to the world
to do. I am not sure if this term is a
very happy one ; for it is open to question
whether or not He was alwayj fully
conscious of Himself. Some of the finest
and some of the grandest things are im-
conscious. Thus humility is not aware
of itself: if it were, it would not be
humility. Genius, too, is largely uncon-
scious; and it is quite possible that re-
ligious genius — or whatever else may be
the best name for that in our Saviour
which animated the details of His conduct
— may be unconscious too. It must never
be forgotten that He lived by faith —
He was the Author and Finisher of faith,
exemplifying in Hunself the virtue which
He recommended to others — or that to
Him, above all others, the prophecy
applied, "Who is blind but My servant

8 XHB WBW TBSTAlQDrp SlTOAnOW
orderf«My«,e«eng«?» U^y,i^
«** be queitioned whether He wa. «
an tone. equJIy con«io„ of both ride,
of H» vocation : may He not have been,
for example, more con«riou, of the tem-
poral and local „de of Hi, de,ti„y «
the commencement, and more of it,

■'orldwide and otoi^.t

= ana eternal aspect at the

do* of Hi, ministiy?
^That He wa, -acutely conwiou, of a
M^ianic vocation cannot be denied
wthout eliminating «, „„eh (rem the
evangelical record, a, ,0 make d,em
practicaUy u^slea for hi«o„cal puipo*,.
E|en Hi, own favourite title for Him-
««. "the Son of man," i, „ow ahno,t
"■"ver^Uly recognised .0 have been
•Jenved frem the parage i„ ^^
where one like unto d,e Son of man i,
•een coming to die Ancient of Days i„
the cloud, of heaven; and this passage

THB NBW TB8TAMBNT SITUATION 0

undoubtedly deacribes a Messianic scene.
So, likewise, the other great title, " the
Son of God," whatever may be its ulti-
mate meaning, is surrounded with Mes-
sianic associatbns ; its application to
Him being in the first place, at any
rate, derived from its application to the
Jewish kings. While these were the
more intimate names of the expected
Deliverer, the two corresponding popular
titles were "the Son of David" and
"the Christ"; and these also Jesus con-
nected with Himself. It has, indeed,
been frequendy argued of late that,
when He demanded of the scribes how,
in Psalm ex., the Messiah could be the
Son of David when at the same time
He was called his Lord, He intended
to acknowledge Himself not to be in the
Davidic line. This I believe to be a mis-
take, but here it need not be argued,

W THE IWW TBBTAIONT fflTOAnON

«*. even in that cMe. He WM cWmi,.
«o be the Mewieh. The «*,J tenn
"Chrfaf WM .voided by Him for
•««»». which CM be earily explained;
but, when « the critical moment the
apostles through the lip, of St Peter
jolemnly bestowed thU title upon Him.
He accepted it with fervour; the Trium-
PW Entrx into Jerusalem was a direct
ofler of Himself in the Messianic cha-
™«"to Hi, feIIow<ount,ymen; and. in
•Pi«e of the feilure of d,i, attempt. He
acknowledged HimMlf on oath, before
«ne high prieet. to be the Christ

On d,e other hand, diere are mamfold
indication, riat Je,u, wa, conscious of
more cadiolic relationd,ips with men and
of more intimate relations widi God
than would be suggested by die tenn
Messianic. Even in the use of the
phrase "tile Son of man " He clearly

THB NBW TBSTAMBirr SITUATION 11

oventopped the limits of purely human
consciousness, when He claimed that
the Son of man had power on earth
to forgive sins or when He described
the Son of man as coming in the clouds
of heaven to be the Judge of quick and
dead; and it is di£ficult not to recognize
in the phrase itself a worldwide con-
nection with men in general far beyond
the compass of a Messiah of the Jews.
As for the other name, "the Son of
God," while in the Synoptists it may
be purely Messianic, St John staten
categorically that the Jews accused Him
of blasphemy because, by applying it,
or allowing it to be applied, to Himself,
He made Himself equal with God. In
His references to God and the world
unseen, so abundant in the ordinary
course of His ministry. He betrayed an
intimacy with the supernatural far above

12 THE NEW TESTAMENT SITUATION

the reach of ordinaiy men. while in the
breadth and wisdom of His teaching
about human nature and human relation-
ships there was revealed an equally super-
natural knowledge of what is in man.

It was, however, as the end of His
earthly course drew near, that He first
fully revealed how different was His own
conception o( Himself and of His destiny
from that entertained by His contem-
poraries or even by His disciples. The
thoughts of the latter about Him were
Messianic in the most narrow and literal
sense. That is to say. the success of His
enterprise would, in their eyes, have in-
volved the seizure of the Jewish throne.'
the expulsion of the Romans from Pales-
tine, and the setting up of a worldwide
empire with Jerusalem as its capital.
Anything less than this was failure; and
as for death at the hands of the authori-

THE N&W TESTAMENT SITUATION 13

ties of the nation whose king they ex-
pected Him to be — this meant, in their
estimate, utter and final ruin. The Phari-
sees and Sadducees themselves were not
more convinced than were the apostles,
on the eve of the final passages of
Christ's career, that death and burial
for Him could have but one meaning —
namely, the collapse of His cause and
the falsification of His claims.

Nevertheless, Jesus did die, and was
buried. As He uttered His expiring cry,
and as the stone which sealed the door of
the sepulchre sank into its place, there
was not a shadow of doubt in the minds
of the Jewish authorities that the career
of a false Messiah had come to an end,
and that of Him or His pretensions
nothing more would ever be heard. And
what could His disciples say? They
entertained the very same presuppositions

M THE NEW TESTAMENT SITUATION

as to what the course of the true Messiah
must be, and as to the evidence which ^
must prove any pretended Messiah to be
a false one. The invariable assumption
of modem naturalistic Lives of Christ-
down to the very ktest, th-* of Otto
Holtzmann-is, that the disciples oelieved
in the resurrection of Christ because they
were intensely anticipating it, the excited
expectation Seating the event But
never has anything less historical been
imagined. Religio-political illusions have
not been so rare in this world as to render
the possibility of such a thing in any case
inconceivable ; and, bitter as it must have
been to admit the fact, the disciples had
overwhelming reasons for believing that
they had been mistaken. There was
nothing whatever to protect them from the
logic of events. The enterprise in which
they had been engaged had terminated ;

THE NEW TESTAMENT SITUATION 15

and there was nothing to mitigate their
despair. With this correspond all the
truly historical notices of those hours
which followed the expiry and the burial
of Jesus. The holy women went to the
sepulchre, not to see whether or not it
was vacant, but for the purpose of anoint*
ing His dead body, and, when they re-
ported to the apostles that they had seen
Him alive, their words seemed to them
as idle tales and they believed them not
The two disciples on the way to Emmaus
let out with perfect simplicity their dis-
belief in what the women had experienced,
and the posture of affairs, as seen by those
about Jesus, could not have been more
pointedly or pathetically described than in
their words, " But we trusted that it had
been He which should have redeemed
Israel." St. Thomas only put into words
of brutal plainness the scepticism felt by

16 THE NEW TESTAMENT SITUATION

all; and, even when the risen Saviour
appeared to the five hundred in GalUee,
it is admitted, some still doubted. So
far from being so excited with the hope of
His resurrection as to be willing to accept
any evidence, they were so much the
reverse as to be only capable of being
convinced "by many infallible proofs."

These proofs were forthcoming. At
least as early as the confession of His
Messiahship by the Twelve, through
the lips of St. Peter, Jesus Himself had
known that, instead of ascending the
Jewish throne, He was to die at the
hands of the authorities of the Jewish
nation. This He endeavoured to com-
municate to the disciples, returning to
the subject again and again and adding
detail after detail, so as to familiarize
them with the unwelcome conception.
In their minds the effect was nil; for

n

THE NEW TESTAMENT SITUATION 17

they could not take it in, and, attri-
buting to the strange words of their
/ Master some occult, parabolic meaning,
they persisted in their own theory of
the development of the Messiah's career.
The mind of Jesus undoubtedly, however,
dwelt more and more upon the gloomy
aspect of the future; yet it is hard for
us to comprehend how He was affected
by the change in His prospects. On
the one hand, if we think of the future,
in all its details, as known to Him,
there seems to be an unreality in His
conduct Yet this is only a single in-
stance of the difficulty which, to our
minds, always attends the foreknowledge,
even by a divine Being, of coming
events; and it is not difficult to feel
how imperative it was that He should
carry out the Messianic programme to
its issue by oflfering Himself in the

Tkt/ktammtmt

8

18 THE NEW TESTAMENT SITUATION

character of Deliverer and King to the
nation which had received the
promises. On the other hand, there can
be no doubt about the reality of the
darkness in which His fate involved
Him or the pain He suffered from the
rejection of His claims by His country,
men. As He advances step by step
mto the gathering gloom, He has all
the appearance of one who is being led
by a way which he knows not, although
gleams of the glorious secret of Pro-
vidence come through now and then.
Jesus missed the Jewish throne, but the
providential force which carried Him
past it swept Him up to an infinitely
greater height, and, in the moment of
losing all. He obtained the empire of
the universe, being, we seem to feel at
this point, in the grasp of a Power above
and beyond His own consciousness.

:i

n

THE NEW TESTAMENT SITUATION 10

While it may be difficult to determine
with exactitude when and how the eyes of
Jesus were opened to this transformation
in His fortunes, and we speak on the
subject with faltering and yet perhnps
with overbold lips, there is no doubt
at all when and how the eyes of the
apostles were opened to it : to them this
transmutation was the effect of the re-
surrection, which changed and trans-
figured everything. It changed the
terrible series of events through which
they had been passing from being the
act and triumph of sinful men into the
design of the wonder-working God; it
changed Jesus from being a false and
discredited Messiah into the King of
kings and the Lord of lords ; and it
changed themselves from the shamed
adherents of a defeated cause into the
champions and witnesses of a Gospel

20 THE NEW TESTAMENT SITUATION

which held in its hand the conquest of
the world.

Sucti is the situation in the New
Testament In the speeches of the
apostles, and especially those of St
Peter, at the beginning of Acts, it can
be seen with what firmness its principal
outlines had fixed themselves in the
apprehension of the Christian com-
munity. During the seven weeks be-
tween the Passover and Pentecost the
minds of the disciples must have been
in a state of intense activity, passing
through one of those crises by which
great convictions are produced in men
not so much by the vigour of their own
thinking as by the force of the impact
made on them by providential events, or,
as the devout student will recognize, by
the action of the Spirit of God. In
vindicating the movement of which they

i

THE NEW TESTAMENT SITUATION 21

were the champions, they pointed to the
gift of tongues and the effects it had
produced ; and they traced these directly
to a promise given to themselves by One
whom they had seen ascending m*o the
heavens: at His departure He had told
them to wait for the promise of the Holy
Spirit, and now it had come in forms
palpable to all. This was evidence that
He who had given them the promise
was alive, though invisible, and seated in
some position of power, from which He
was sending forth these tokens of His
mind and will. But this evidence, ac-
cessible to all, was only supplementary to
even more direct evidence they had
enjoyed themselves in the many appear-
ances He had made to them during the
forty days. Through these they had
been thoroughly convinced that their
conceptions of the natural course of the

» THE raw TBBTAMBNT SITUATION

Messiah'! career had been mistaken; for
whereas it had seemed to them im-
possible that He should die, this was
now seen to be obligatory, and, whereas
they had expected to see the Messiah
ascend the Jewish throne, the intention
of Providence had been to set Him on
a throne infinitely loftier, as King and
Lord of heaven and earth.

From convictions such as these others
of equal moment could not but inevit-
ably develop themselves. If their
Master nhu really holding this exalted
position now, He must always have
been far higher and greater than they
had realized when companying with
Him in the lowly days of His flesh.
Their minds accordingly now flew back
over the past and saw everything in a
new light Many hints of His, and
sayings which they had scarcely noticed

\

THB NBW TBBTAMBNT SITUATION 28

or had misunderstood, now came back
to memory and fitted into their places
in the new universe of ideas which was
shaping itself in their consciousness.
They now began to know their Master
after the spirit; and, though they had
known Him after the flesh, they now
henceforth knew Him so no more. It
was this transfigured Christianity that
they preached to the world; they were
themselves transfigured by the experi-
mces through which they had passed;
and it was in this exalted mood that
they thought out the religion which was
about to capture the heart of humanity.
There has never been any Christianity
as an actu^ power in this world except
the Christianity of the resurrection. Of
course, the apostolic Christianity carried
in its bosom also all the tender human
facts of the preceding years and all the

«4 THE NEW TBSTAIOBNT SITUATION

•h^Iowi of the humfliation of Chri«;
«>ut the attempt being made in our day
to go back to Christ in the senM of
making Chrittianity consist solely of
what Jesus. did and taught in the days
before His burial-with the resurrection
left out-is a return to the position of
the disciples in the days of their ignofw
ance, if not to that of the enemies by
whom He was .crucified.

Now, in this new situation created by

the resurrection and the ascension of

our Lord, a place unique and essential

was taken by His death. This had, at

first, been the great stumbling-block. By

the Jewish authorities it was interpreted

as a verdict of Providence in their

favour, stamping Jesus of Nazareth as

a false Messiah. We may hesitate

to attribute the same inference to the

disciples, and, indeed, the state of

THB NBW TBSTAMBMT SITUATION 86

their minds during the days when
their Master was lying in the grave
might form a theme for study which
would not be easily concluded. It would
be probably safe to say that their love
still held fast, even when their faith
gave way, and that they must have
been conscious of rich salvage, in the
words and other memories of their
Master, even if there had been ship-
wreck. But that the cause in which
their fortunes had been embarked had
suffered irretrievable shipwreck must
have been, if not their expressed, at
least their subconscious conviction. A
Messiah must reign, not die; and the
death of Jesus must have been all the
more mysterious to them because, while
death is for the guilty, life is the portion
of the innocent, and they knew their
Master to be holy, harmless, undefiled,

4

26 THE NEW TESTAMENT SITUATION

and separate from sinners. When, how-
ever, the resurrection and the ascension
became to them facts of experience, the
death also assumed an entirely new
complexion. Instead of being the
triumph of His enemies, the despair of
His friends, and the termination of His
own career, it assumed the aspect of a
sacrifice offered for the sin of the world
—such a sacrifice as none but a divine
Being could have offered, and such a
sacrifice as involved immeasurable benefit
for all the children of men. The burial
was a kind of imprisonment for the debt
of the race, but the resurrection was a
divine acknowledgment that this debt had
been discharged— "He was delivered for
our offences and raised again for our
justification "—and it was on the basis
of this discharge that He was raised to
the right hand of power and entitled to

THE NEW TBSTAMBNT SITUATION 27

distribute gifts to m-JH; especially the
gift of the forgive' iess of sins It may
be that this conclusion was lot reached
quite as rapidly as the others, already
referred to, which are elaborated so dis-
tinctly in the earliest Christian preaching
recorded in the beginning of Acts; but
it must have been drawn very soon,
because remission of sin through the
blood of Christ stood in the very fore-
front of the Gospel which Christianity
had to preach as soon as it began to
evangelize the world.

By Dr. Dale, first, and then by Dr.
Denney, what may be called the Biblical
Theology of this subject has been ex-
hausted; and nothing can be more im-
pressive than, under the guidance of
either of these able expositors, to pass
from one circle of ideas in the New

28 THE NEW TESTAMENT SITUATION

Testament to another, and see the posi-
tion which the doctrine holds in each.
The unanimity o! the New Testament
authors is thus seen to be remarkable.
St. Peter is the eariiest spokesman ; and.
both in his speeches reported in the
Acts and in his Epistles, the forgiveness
of sins is put forward as the primary
blessing of the Gospel, and this is directly
connected with the death of Christ. By
St John, the other intimate of Jesus, the
same language is held in all his writings.
Between these two comes in St Paul,
and, through all his epistles, from the
Thessalonians. the firstfniits of his lite-
rary activity, to the Pastoral Epistles,
which came from "Paul the aged." the
same testimony is heard, though it
reaches its greatest height and intensity
at the points where his genius was at
its fullest stature, such as Galatians

THE NEW TESTAMENT SITUATION 29

and Romans, Colossians and Ephesians.
Nowhere, however, is a more striking wit-
ness borne to this truth than in the Epistle
to the Hebrews, which, in some respects,
stands by itself among the New Testa-
ment writings, being, as Dr. Denney has
observed, the most theological of them all.
Even more noteworthy than the una-
nimity of the writers is the weight of these
utterances. It is not only in passing
allusions or in verses which are easily
forgotten that this subject is referred
to, but the principal places in which it
is stated and discussed are great texts,
palpitating with the spirit of inspiration
and embodying the very essence of the
Gospel— texts which subdue the mind
of the reverent reader, who feels that
he is standing on holy ground. Thus,
in St Peter, we have the great words:
" Forasmuch as ye know that ye were

so THE NEW TESTAMENT SITUATION

not redeemed with corruptible things as
silver and gold from your vain conversa-
tion received by tradition from your
fathers, but with the precious blood of
Christ, as of a lamb without blemish
and without spot"; and again: "Who
His own self bare our sins in His own
body on the tree, that we, being dead
to sins, should live unto righteousness ;
by whose stripds ye are healed." In the
earliest writing of St. John we come at
once on the triumphant passage : " Unto
Him that loved us and washed us from
our sins in His own blood, and hath made
us kings and priests unto God and His
Father : unto Him be glory and dominion
for ever and ever. Amen " ; and at the
very height of this Book of Revelation
we read how "they sung a new song,
saying, Thou art worthy to take the book,
and to open the seals thereof: for Thou

THE NEW TESTAMENT SITUATION 31

wast slain, and hast redeemed us unto
God by Thy blood out of every kindred,
and tongue, and people, and nation ; and
hast made us unto our God kings and
priests ; and we shall reign on the earth.
And I beheld, and I heard the voice of
many angels round about the throne and
the beasts and the elders : and the
number of them was ten thousand times
ten thousand, and thousands of thousands ;
saying with a loud voice. Worthy is the
Lamb that was slain to receive power,
and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and
honour, and glory, and blessing." Nor
is the tone of sentiment different in his
latest writings; for we read in his First
Epistle : " If we say that we have fellow-
ship with Him and walk in darkness, we
lie and do not the truth ; but, if we walk
in the light, as He is in the light, we
have fellowship one with another, and

'Ud

!il-

4 k

32 THE NEW TESTAMENT SITUATION

the blood of Jesus Christ His Son,
deanseth us from all sin " ; and a little
further on: "My little children, these
things write I unto you, that ye sin not
And, if any man sin, we have an Advo-
cate with the Father, Jesus Christ the
righteous; and He is the propitiation
for our sins, and not for ours only, but
also for the sins of the whole world."
It is, however, in^ St Paul that the voice
of revelation on this subject strikes the
deepest note. Take, as a specimen, this
from the fifth of Romans : " For scarcely
for a righteous man will one die; yet
peradventure for a good man some would
even dare to die ; but God commendeth
His love towards us in that, while we
were yet sinners, Christ died for us";
and add to it the following from the
fifth of H. Corinthians: "Now then we
are ambassadors for Christ, as ^iiough

THE NEW TESTAMENT SITUATION 88

God did beseech you by us: we pray
you, in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled
to God. For He hath made Him to be
sin for us, who knew no sin; that we
might be made the righteousness of God
in Him." Who does not feel, as he
merely listens to such quotations, that
they contain the heart and kernel of^
the Gospel? and who would not say, on
deeper consideration, that any representa-
tion of Christianity as a whole into which
statements like these do not fit sweetly
and naturally cannot be the true one?

Now, I venture to say that there are
many works on the Atonement which do
not really face these cardinal and classical
texts, much less rejoice in them. As a
specimen may be mentioned the work of
the late Dr. Madeod Campbell.' I do

* " The Nature of the Atonement," first puUished
in 1856.

Tkt Attiumat 4

m

' ii

84 THE NEW TB8TAMBNT SnTTATION

not think that any sympathetic and
Christian mind can read this woric with-
out a sense df reverence for its author ;
he is so evidently a good man. and so
many of his observations obviously v;*ng
from a deep experience of the divine
life in the soul. But the author does
not face-up to the classical texts on his
subject in the New Testament He has
a few favourite texts of his own, chiefly
taken from Si John and, as a rule,
bearing only remotely on the subject
with which he is dealing, and these he
quotes incessantly, because they form
convenient vehicles for conveying his
own ideas ; but he has only infrequent
and casual references to such passages
as those referred to above, making no
attempt to interpret them carefully or
to sound their truth to the bottom.
On the Continent it is not unusual to

THB NBW TB8TA1CBNT SnTJATION 85

meet with works which behave towards
these classical passages in a much more
cavalier fiuhion. In Ritschl's famous
work,' for example, it is allowed at the
critical points tiat 3t Paul and the
author ot the Episde to the Hebrews
teach the orthodox view; but the writer
takes the liberty of dissenting from them,
appealing against them to the words ot
Christ, as the only final authority.

Whatever may be thought of such an
appeal, the challenge to come to the
words of Christ Himself is one which
a Christian theologian cannot decline ;
yet, when we attempt to meet such
writers on their own ground, it is far
from easy to get into close grips with

* "The Christian Doctrine of Justification and
Reconciliation,'' 1870-74; third edition 1888. The
first yolume (historical), and the third (doctrinal),
but not yet the second (exegetical), are accessible in
EngUsh.

m

1

i I

38 THE raw TBBTAIOSNT SmTAHON

them; for moM of those -ho would thus
appeal from St Paul to Christ would
not allow that anything recoided by St
John as spoken by Christ can be accepted
as trustworthy; so that even a great
text like John iii. i6 would be thrown
out of the argument In like manner the
report of St Luke that the risen Saviour,
in conversation with the two on the way
to Emmaus, said to them, " O fools and
slow of heart to believe all that the pro-
phets have cpokeni Ought not Christ
to have suffered these things and to
enter into His glory ? And beginning
at Moses and all the prophets He ex-
pounded unto them, in aU the Scriptures,
the things concerning Himself," would
have no effect upon them, because, of
course, in their opinion, there was no
bodily resurrection.
Still there remain two sayings of our

THE NEW TB8TAMBNT SITUATION 87

Lord, re\>rded in the Synopdsts, which
are enough by themselves to assure us
that what was taught by the apostles
about the connection of the foigiveness
I of sins with the death of Christ had been

anticipated by the Master Himself. The
one of these is the statement that the
Son of man had come to give His life a
ransom for many; and the other is the
great saying, uttered at the institution of
the Lord's Supper, about the new cove-
nant in His blood, shed for many for the
remission of sins. Ritschl's exegesis of
the former of these is the reverse of
satisfactory : all he will admit to be im-
plied being that the death of Christ is,
in some way, connected with the removal
of sin; while no justice is done to the
idea of "ransom," which, however, is a
vital element in the statement. As for
the other saying, a great deal has been

h

88 THE NBW TBSTAMBNT SITUATION

•ttempted in the way of breaking its
force by magnifying the diacrepandet in
«he different accounts of the incident;
J>ut the documents have an additional
guarantee of immeasurable importance
in the celebration of the Lord's Supper
in the Church from the beginning ; and
Dr. Denney has done well in insisting
upon the prominence of the ideas of sin and
its removal in both of the sacraments.*

Thus, in the teaching of Jesus Himsell,
as well as in all the other types of teaching
in the New Testament, our doctrine holds
a position from which it cannot be dis-
lodged. But what I am prindpally in-
sisting upon in this lecture is something
broader : it is the place of the Atonement
in the entire New Testament situation—
not in the literature so much as in the
* A full eiegesis of both of these dasrical passages
wiU be foond in the author's " Christolosy of Jesus,"
ch. V.

I

THE NEW TB8TAMBNT SITUATION Jrf

hi«ory— its place in the system of facts
an4 truths of which Christianity consisted,
after it had under^rone the experiences of
the resurrection and the ascension. As
Chriit thereby laid aside the garments
of His humiliation and put on His robes
of exaltation— as He passed from being
the lowly Man ot sorrows to be the
Prime at God's right hand, to whom
had )een given all power in heaven and
on eath— 40 His death, instead of being
a huniliating enigma, was recognized as
being he ransom given for the redemp-
tion 0* the worid, in accordance with
God's eternal plan and in agreement
with th voice of prophecy.

It is interesting to observe that, as
soon as Christian thought began to specu-
late pro^undly on our subject, this was
the aspet of the truth on which it fas-
tened; $r Anselm's famous question

40 THE NEW TESTAMENT SITUATION

CWr Dtus homo? is intended to be
answered in this very sense. This acute
and famous schoolman pointed out the
balance and proportion between whar is
believed about the person of Christ on
the one hand and the estimate fomed
of His work on the other. The peison
being such as by the resurrection juid
ascension Jesus was proved to be, tjien,
the incarnation' can only have taken ilace
for some transcendent object ; anV, on
the other hand, a work such as tie re-
demption of the world can only hav^ been
undertaken by One such as Jes^ was
demonstrated by these facts to bej This
balance will always be found ^ hold
good in theology. Lower the cofbeption
of the person, and inevitably ^ work
which He came into the worl/ to do
dwindles into that of a teacheifand an
example ; lower the work from tht of the

THE NEW TESTAMENT SITUATION 41

redemption of the souls of men from the
guilt, the power, and the eternal conse-
quences of sin, and inevitably the person
is degraded in the same proportion. But
a full and scriptural doctrine of Atone-
ment will always have as its presupposi-
tion and accompaniment a doctrine of the
Saviour like that of the second chapter of
Philippians, where He appears as One
who, being in the form of God, thought it
not robbery to be equal with God, or that
of the mystic words with which the pro-
logue to the Gospel according to St John
commences : " In tiie beginning was the
Word ; and the Word was with God ; and
the Word was God."

I am not denying that any portion
of tiie Lord's activity detached from
the rest— say, His teaching— has virtue
in it, and may do people a great deal
of good; or that any section of His

i8 THE NEW TB88TAMBNT SITUATION

Hfe, detached from the re8t-«iy, that
which terminates with His burial-^nay
be a subject of study and an object of
reverence, exercising an influence the
extent or value of which one would
not desire to circumscribe. Our own
generation has reaped so much profit
and delight from the rediscovery of
the earthly life of Jesus that it haixMy
seems to requite anything else. But,
after all, the whole is greater than the
part; nowhere in the New Testament,
not even in the Gospels, does the histor)^
of Jesus either end with His burial or
commence with His birth; and, while
fragments of the Christian community
may be satisfied with a fragment of the
Gospel, Christianity itself must keep
possession of the whole gift of God. If
there are those wishing to bear the
Christian name who believe that Jesus

IHB NEW TB8TAMBNT SITUATION 43

was only the child of Joseph and Maiy,
and that He never rose out of the
aepukhre of Joseph of Arimathea, then
we frankly concede to them that His
death cannot have been anything like
what we call the Atonement ; but, if this
Muk was, in His origin and destiny^^all
that the New Testament represents H«m
to be, then it harmonizes with the entire
phenomenon to believe that His death,
besides being tue key to the mystery of
His earthly fortunes, was a transcendent
act, effecting for human beings in the
world unseen a change by which have
been secured both their peace with God
here and their unending felicity hereafter ;
and this objective result of the death
of Christ, anterior to our experience,
yet requiring to be appropriated in ex-
perience, is the primary benefit and virtue
of the Atonement

^gST'

THE OLD TESTAMENT
PBEPARATION

II

THE OLD TESTAMENT
PREPARATION

/^NE of the blessings inherited by
those branches of the Church
which derive their spiritual Uneage
from John Calvin is a deep and abid-
ing reverence for the Old Testament
In the other section of Protestantism
this sentiment had never been suflficiently
strong from the beginning; it was
completely broken down during the
ascendancy of Rationalism; and it has

48 OLD TB8TAMBNT PBBPABATION

not been restored by such modem leaders
of thought aa Schleiermacher and Ritschl.
Yet without a profound and sympathetic
knowledge of the Old Testament the
New can never be fully understood
While, no doubt, many preceding ele-
ments mingled in the composition of
the New Testament, the Old Testament
was infinitely the most important in-
fluence. Frofti this source the mind
of Jesus Himself was thoroughly im-
bued; and the apostles derived from
it the ideas as well as the language by
which they interpreted Christianity.
Far deeper even than this, indeed, is
the connection between the two Testa-
ments. As the Old Scots Confession
has it, the same Church of Christ has
subsisted under both the Old and the
New Testaments; and the one dispen-
sation was not only a divine preparatimi

OLD TBSTAMBNT PREPARATION 40

but a divine prefigurement for the
Other.'

Especially has the doctrine of the
Atonement its roots in the Old Testa-
ment; and without an appreciative
knowledge of the sacrificial system of
the old dispensation it can never be
understood. It was in the light of
their experience of the Old Testament
sacrifices that the New Testament
authors wrote as they did about the
<teath of Christ, and it was in the
same lig^t that Jesus Himself spoke as
He did on the same subject at the insti-
tution of the Last Supper. In the fore-
going lecture we have seen that to the
first disciples the death of Christ was the

» "We maist constantUe belief that God pre-
Mrvit, instructit, multipUut, honourit, decoirit and
frome death caUit to lyfe His Xirk in aU aiges, fra
Adam tiU the aiming of Chryst Jesui in the
fleache."— Knox's " Worka," II, 98, 99.

TluAtotmmu g

It

M OLD TIBTAMBNT FBBPARATION

grett •tumbling.block, but that this stone
of stumbling was turned into the very
foundation-stone of the Christian iaith
as soon as His death was recognized as a
ransom paid for the sin of the world ; but
it must have occurred to some to ask how
it was that an interpretation so original
suggested itself at that time; and this is
the question we have now to answer.

It is true that, when we now attempt
to familiarize ourselves with the ritual
of sacrifice as this is laid down in
Leviticus, we find ourselves in a very
alien element; and, when we attempt,
by the aid of modem scholarship, to
master the details of the system, we at
first find ourselves involved in blinding
confiision, so various are the interpre-
tations of the different symbols suggested
by different scholars; for unfortunately

OLD TBBTAMBNT PBBPABATION 51

Ae biblical text merely suppUes riie
J*wi and directions without giving the
reuooM for them, and thus unlimited
•cope is afforded for divergent theories
«nd conflicting speculations. Still, here
and there in the scriptural text signifi-
cant hints occur, suggestive of deep^
underiying principles. Of diese perhaps
the most remarkable is Leviticus xvii. ii,
where, in speaking on an entirely
different subject— namely, the eating of
blood— the sentence occurs, as if inci-
dentaUy : " For the life of the flesh is
in the blood; and I have given it to
you upon the altar, to make an atone-
ment for your souls ; for it is the blood
that maketh an atonement for the soul '*
(or, as it is translated by some, "through
the soul "). Here we seem to be enabled
to capture the very essence of sacrifice :
the blood is regarded as the life or

81 OLD TB9IIAMBNT PBBPARATION

■Old oT the fleih; this animal life of
the victim is nibetituted for the human
life of the worshipper; and this takes
place by divine appointment— "I have
given it to you upon the altar."

Another hint of perhaps equal signifi-
cance is to be found in the frequency with
which the making of atonement by means
of blood is spoken of as if it were the
whole purpose of sacrifice. This, of
course, was not really the case. The
purpose of sacrifice, as of all religion, was
the communion of man with God; but
so conscious was the Old Testament
worshipper of distance and estrangement,
which could only be overcome by an act
through which fellowship was restored,
that this bulked in his mind as if it were
the whole; and the nomenclature of the
Law itself, as if unconsciously, coincided
with this sentiment

OLD TnTAMINT PBBPARATION tt

It must be confessed, it is b^ no msMs
ewy for us now to transport ourselves
into the suce of mind and feeling of a
worshipper on his wajr to the ancient
•anctuary. As the student of literary
history finds something baffling in the
apparently indubitable fact that poetry
preceded prose in the evolution of literaiy
forms, the human mind moving with
perfiect freedom within the constraints of
verse before it could move with any grace
in what appears to us the freer medium,
•o it will always be a puzzle how, in the
evolution of religion, sacrifice preceded
prayer, and how, in the dumb show of
sacrificial ritual, religious feeling em-
bodied itself with assurance centuries
before it had learned to express the same
sentiments with facility in praise and
prayer. Yet of the fact there can be little
doubt Even in the eariiest accountr of

64 OLD TESTAICBNT PREPARATION

Genesis the offering of sacrifice by Cain
and Abel precedes by a generation the
notice in the days of Enos that " then
began men to call on the name of the
Lord," and, while in the Mosaic law there
is little or no mention of prayer, the most
minute and elaborate directions are laid
down about sacrifice.

When we try to imagine to ourselves
an Israelite setting out for Jerusalem
to one of the feasts, taking with him a
bullock, or a sheep, or a goat— the pick of
his flock — or perhaps all three, and, along
with these, some choice specimens of the
produce of his fields or his vineyard, and,
when we contrast his equipment with our
own, as we set out for Church any Simday,
he seems to us a strangely unintelligible
figure. There is nothing, however, more
certain than that the contrast between
him and us is a superficial one, and that, if

OLD TESTAMENT PREPARATION 65

we could penetrate beneath the surface*
we should find in his soul the same
elements of worship as in our own. If
gratitude for past blessings, aspiration
after entire consecration, and the desire
for communion with Heaven be the senti-
ments which make us acceptable worship-
pers« we may be certain that the same
qualities were laose by which he was fitted
for the journey in which he was engaged.
Between the means, indeed, by which
we express our sentiments and those by
which he was going to express his there is
a vast difference ; but it may be doubted
whether in all respects we have the
advantage. We express our gratitude,
for example, in the words of a prayer
or the verses of a psalm or hymn; he
expressed his in deeds — by bringing to
Jehovah specimens of the possessions
with which God had blessed him, very

M OLD TESTAMENT PREPARATION

much in the way in which an old retainer
might carry, every year, to the big house
a bouquet of flowers, a basket of ripe
apples, or a duster of honey out of the
garden with which his kind master had
presented him. Words and music are
easUy come at ; but there was a fine solid
actuality about the means of worship
employed by the Israelite. When the
bullock of the burnt offering rose entire
m smoke towards heaven, to signify the
consecration to God of the entire being
of die worshipper, so costiy an expression
of a diought which must enter into all
worship seemed to mean business. And
might not the pressure of emotion in
the worshipper's mind be all the stronger
through having had time to accumulate, as
months had elapsed since his last visit
to the house of God?
But there was one sentiment which

OLD TESTAMENT PREPARATION 67

bulked very largely in the mind of the
Israelite worshipper— this was penitence.
No doubt he would often bring this
with him from home, as he thought oi
the omissions and transgressions of the
preceding year ; and this was a strong
force impelling him towards the sanctuary.
Human nature being what it is, con-
science must always form a large element
in what is called the religious faculty;
and, while, no doubt, there are many
sentiments which may draw or drive
towards the house of God, those wor-
shippers will generally be found to go
thidier with the greatest frequency and
alacrity who have felt the anguish of a
broken heart. But, when the worshipper
reached the sanctuary, everything there
was fitted to deepen this state of mind.
The sanctuary itself consisted of three
enclosures. In the Holy of Holies the

68 OLD TBS8TAMBNT PREPARATION

presence of the Deity dwelt in awfiil
remoteness, and here only the h^
priest might enter. Adjoimng it was
the Holy Place, to be entered only by
the priests. Outside both was the Court,
where the worshippers assembled; and
here the most prominent object was the
altar, to which the worshipper himself
brought the victim. I„ the presence of
the priest he laid his hands on its head.
This action has been variously inter-
preted; but there can be little doubt
that it was a symbol of confession. This
is made very clear by what happened
at a similar stage on the Great Day of
Atonement, when the victim was doubled,
but only with the object of therebj^
representing more clearly the two sides
of one idea; and. while one of the
animals went, as usual, to the altar, the
other had the sins of the whole people

OLD TESTAMENT PREPARATION 59

confessed over its head and carried them
away into the wilderness— that is, into
inaccessibility and oblivion.

The next act was the slaying of the
victim with the worshipper's own hand,
which was intended as an acknowlec^-
ment that he deserved to die on account
of his sin. The blood, as it escaped,
was caught by the priest and sprinkled
on the altar. This was the atonement
proper. But opinions differ widely here
as to the precise point of the symbolism.
The acceptance of the blood by the
priest, the representative of God, and
the lavishing of it on the altar, which,
in a certain sense, may be said to have
betokened the presence of God, might
appear to indicate that the worshipper's
acknowledgment of his life as forfeit to
the divine holiness was accepted by the
Divinity ; and this notion would be sup-

eo OLD TESTAMENT PRBPARATIOIf

ported by the striking fact that, at the
making of the covenant in Exodus xxiv.,
while one half of the blood was sprinkled
on the altar, the other half was sprinkled
back on the people, as if to indicate
that the Deity, after accepting the life,
which had been confessed to be guilty
and forfeit, returned it again, purified
and invigorate^, for a new existence and
activity. Some have thought the idea
of the symbolism to be the interposition
of the life of the victim between the
Deity and the soul of the wor^ipper.
The fundamental notion of the verb is
to "cover"; but how exactly the cover-
ing was supposed to act—whether in the
way of extinguishing the wrath of the
Deity, or of protecting the soul of the
worshipper, or of hiding away the sin-
it may not be possible to determine, as
no distinct indication is given in the

OLD TBSTAMBNT PBBPAKATION 61

documents, the action being supposed to
speak for itself. And it really does so:
it is life for life, the victim dying in
order that the guilty may live.

In the Holy Place stood the altar of
incense, with the shewbread and the
golden candlestick; and these obviously
spoke of a stage of reconciliation more
advanced than that symbolized in the
Court The incense signified the soar-
ing of the spirit to heaven in gratitude
and praise. But even here the idea of
reconciliation was not altogether absent:
for, in at least one kind of sacrifice, the
blood of the victim was sprinkled on
the horns of the altar of incense.

The Holy of Holies signified the
innermost communion. Here stood the
ark of the covenant; the tables of
the law deposited therein typifying the
will of God, as the light, standing by,

82 OLD TBBTAICBNT PBBPABATION

typified Hit holy love ; while the figiirei.
above, bending towards the centre,
symbolized the nearness and devotion of
the worshippers. But that even here
reconciliation was not forgotten was
indicated not only by the iact that the
lid of the ark bore the sacred and
pathetic name of the Mercy-seat, but by
the fact thatt once a year the high
priest brought in hither the sacrificial
blood and sprinkled it

Such were the stages through which
the imagination of an Israelite was
designed to pass when he visited the
sanctuary. The proceedings of the
occasion concluded with a sacrificial
feast, in which, the strain of preceding
emotions being relaxed, he held happy
communion not only with his God but
with his family and friends, and it is
possible to look upon this as the cubni-

OLD TBSTAICBNT FBBPABATION 68

nation of the whole proceedings. Yet
this is a feature of all religious cults
whatever, whereas the distinguishmg
mark of the Israelite worship consisted
in a certain loftiness and intensity of
emotion— the dealing of a sinner with
the Most Holy, the justification and
reconciliation of the guilty.

Thus have I touched lightly on only
a few points of the sacrificial system in
the old dispensation; a detailed and
minute study would, I believe, greatly
increase the impressiveness of the
whole; but there may be advantages in
the slightness of this treatment, because
the naked outlines seem to reveal un-
mistakably the character and drift of
the system.

It requires, indeed, no very long or
close inq)ection to discern the imper-

M OLD TESTAMENT PREPARATION

fection of (hat economy. Although the
victim was the property of the wor-
shipper, it could only in a very modified
•ense be his substitute. This office was
forced upon it, and could not, in the
nature of the case, be voluntary. It is
true, the animal died; but the death of
an animal is on a totaUy different plane
from that of ^ man. Hence it has been
usual for Christian theology to discern
in the ancient ritual a series of indica-
tions pointing forward to a sacrifice in
which all the virtue of the ancieat
sacrifices was to be swallowed up and
far transcended. It is true, it used to
be too confidently assumed that the men
of the old dispensation were capable
of perceiving the imperfection of the
arrangements under which they lived,
and of appreciating their typical signifi-
cance. But at least to the mind of

OLD TBBTAMBNT PREPARATION 66

^^ ^ mxy reiFerently infer, this fulfil-
ment woa ever present, and He had in
view the sacrifice of One who was so
Wentifiod with humanity as to be able to
be every man's substitute, and yet so
far above humanity that His single
death had a virtue adequate to the need
of the whole world.

This imperfection of the sacrificial
«y«em of the Old Testament is amply
acknowledged in the great New Testament
commentary on the Levitical law, con-
tained m the Epistle to the Hebrews :
" For there is verily," says the author, « a
dIsannuUing of the commandment going
Jjcfore, for the weakness and unprofitable-
ness thereof; for the law made nothing
perfect, but the bringing in of a better
hope did." Stai more explicitly he says,
fiather on : " The way into the Holiest of
*" ^ "°^ ^^ "**^® manifest, while as

If!

66 OLD TBSTAlfBNT PBBPARATION

the first taberaade wai yet standing,
which was a figure for the time then pre-
sent, in which were offered both gifts and
sacrifices, that could not make him that
did the service perfect, as pertaining to
the conscience, which stood only in meats
and drinks and divers washings and
carnal ordinances, imposed on them until
the time of reformation." Most explicit of
all is the declaration in the last chapter
occupied with this argument, where it is
blundy said : *' It is not possible that
the blood of bulls and goats should take
away sin."

Through several chapters the contrast
is drawn between the old dispensation
and the new, with the object of bringing
out the superiority of the latter, and espe-
daily the glory of Jesus Christ, who is its
agent and administrator. First, He is a
priest after the order of Mdchizedek.

OLD TB8TA1CBNT PREPARATION «7

Thii it an order iar above that of Aaron,
M was prefigured by the fact that Abia-
ham, and, through him, his son Levi, the
head and origin of the Levitical .yst ni,
paid tithes to Melchiiedek. If th- Lcxi
tical priesthood had been pcrteit. there
would have been no need of a priest
arising after another order ; but the Levt
tical priest was neither near enou b to
God nor near enough to man for the full
dischaige of the functions he had under-
taken. The Levitical priests had to offer
•acrifices for their own sins as well as for
the sins of others ; but the perfect priest
required to be holy, harmless, undefiled
and separate from sinners. The Levitical
priest might for a certain length of time
assist the worshipper and superintend his
spiritual progress, but then he might die
and leave the worshipper in the lurch ;
the perfect priest, on the contiary, beii^

88 OLD TESTAMENT PREPARATION

immortal, is able to save to the uttermost
them that come unto God through him.
Again, the place of worship is vastly
different in the two cases. Although,
to the childish apprehensions of the
ancients, an immeasurable sacredness
clung to the Holy of Holies, there is,
to minds emancipated from the glamour
of inherited slssociation, something ludi-
crous in the idea that so straitened a
place should be the abode of the Lord
of heaven and earth ; and a similar in-
adequacy cleaves to nearly all the
amusements in the material structure
of tabernacle or temple. But Jesus
Christ has entered, not into this struc-
ture made with hands, but into heaven
itself, now to appear in the presence of
God for us.

The climax, however, of the contrast
lies in the difference between the offer-

OLD TESTABfENT PREPABATION 69

Jng in tlK one case and that in the
other : " For if the blood of bulls and
of goats, and the ashes of a heifer
sprinklmg the unclean, sanctifieth to the
purifying of the flesh, how much more
shall the precious blood of Christ, who
through the eternal Spirit offered Him-
self without spot to God, puige your
conscience from dead works to serve the
living God." These old sacrifices had
to be continually repeated— a striking
testimony to their inadequacy—" but this
man, after He had offered one sacri-
fice for sins forever, sat down on the
right hand of God, from henceforth
expecting till His enemies be made His
footstool; for by one offering He hath per-
fected for ever them that are sanctified."
The result of the whole is, that by
the sacrifice of Christ there has been
established a new and more perfect re-

ikis

70 OLD TESTAMENT PREPARATION

ladon between God and man; or, as
it is expressed in Scripture, a new
covenant has been formed. The first
covenant was made with the children of
Israel at Mount Sinai, on their depar-
ture from Egypt, and it was sealed with
blood, as covenants even among heathen
peoples usually were in ancient times.
But it was defective, and it was broken ;
so that a new covenant became re-
quisite. And here again the seal is
blood, but blood so precious as to
guarantee that the union and communion
shall never be broken, because the con-
science is satisfied and the law is written
on the heart

The remark has been recently made
that the support which the sacrificial
system of the Old Testament is able to
lend to any New Testament doctrine

OLD TESTAMENT PREPARATION 71

must be dependent on the amount of
credit attaching to the Levitical ritual
itself. And this is unquestionably true.
It would be vain to appeal to the QM
Testament sacrifices as evidence for the
New Testament doctrine of Atonement
if that system were merely a human
product, invented by the superstition of
ignorant men and kept up by the
self-interest ot priests. Unfortunately
this is the impression produced by not
a little of the criticism of the Old
Testament with which we are at present
familiar. Viewed in this modem light,
the sacrificial system appears as a late
development in Old Testament religious
history, emerging at a point where re-
ligious sentiment was in process of decay
and healthy inspiration giving place to for-
malism. Some would, I fancy, if chal-
lenged, save themselves from this inference

72 OLD TMTAIONT PBBPABATION

by eaqiiiaiiiing that, thougii Hm codification
of the Law WM late, the practfcs of it waa
early, many of the rites and oeremonies
which It enjoined reaching back to the
remotest antiquity. Whether ornot this
be a satisfactory explanation of the
Mosaic authorship so distinctly ascribed
in the records to these laws and prac-
tices, I will i^ot at present inquire;
but. I venture to say. it is not credit-
able to Christian scholarship to allow
the impression to be produced that die
sacrificial system was the product of a
late and decadent phase of rdigioii.
instead of vindicating it as of divine
origin and as serving a wise end in the
providential education of the race.

Those scholars who depreciate the
Levitical system in the style above hinted
at are wont to set over against it, as the
truly divine thing in the Old Testament,

OLD TESTAMENT PREPARATION 78

the inapuing history of Prophecy, by
wWch principles were developed in place
of rules and morality cultivated in place
of religion. And it cannot be questioned
that this contrast was a raal and a deep
one. The retigkNi of Mcrifiossawi priests
tended to foraaiisB, mid liie mnd of
feasts and visits to tke mmttamw we-
scribed in the Law had a tea^ncy to
become a soulless routine. ThiB became
all the more objectionable when it was
combined in the minds of the people with
the belief, which may be caUed the corner-
stone of die popular Israelite creed, that
national and individual prosperity was
guaranteed by the observance of the
Law. There was, indeed, a noble sense
in which this was true; in fact, it is in
all times and in all places the most funda-
mental of all truths : a nation or a famUy
or a man that fears God and keeps His

I

74 OLD TBSTAMBNT PREPARATION

commandments is on the highway to true
welfare ; whereas to pursue the opposite
h'ne of conduct is to be on the broad road
which leadeth to destruction. There is.
however, an ignoble way of construing
this truth by which it may be turned into
falsehood; and this was the besetting
temptation of the Israelite mind, which
the warnings of prophets were required
to correct The divine promise was
turned into a selfish motive; the ser-
vices of religion were performed, not out
of love to God, but with an eye to
the rewards which they would bring;
and religion was made a substitute for
morality. Men whose worldly ctrcym-
stances prospered in this pursuit nierred
that their health and wealth were tokens
of the divine approval, as well as tributes
to their own character; and so religion,
instead of ministering to humifey, became

OLD TESTAMENT PREPARATION 76

an occasion for arrogance and boasting.
This was the state of mind against which
the prophets launched their thunderbolts ;
but, when these, in this mood, denounce
blood and incense, the temple and the
festivals, it is an entire mistake— although
one often made in our time even by able
men— to suppose that they were enemies
of the public religion or indifferent to the
laws by which it was regulated. The
truth is, any form of religion, however
spiritual, may be thus abused, and be,
therefore, deserving of prophetic animad-
version; yet it would be too wild a
mistake to look upon those who under-
take this prophetic office as the enemies
of all religion.

Besides, however, the chastisement of
the rich and prosperous, whose religion
was a sham, the prophets and thinkers
of Israel had the further office of vindi-

iii

m

76 OLD TBSTAMBNT FBXRAMATlOVf

caring the poor and needy, wboie religion
was real. For the principle, so constantly
w«»ted on by the writers of Psalms and
Proverbs, which promised prosperity to
the religious, while it denounced destruc-
tion against the wicked, did not always
appear to hold good. Not infrequently
the righteous were the reverse of happy
in their worldly -circumstances, while, on
the contrary, the prosperity of the wicked
sometimes grew beyond all reasonable
bounds— their eyes stood out with fat ;
they had more than heart could wish
-and they were not slow to dfaw or to
P^ilMni the inference of tke friends of
Job, that tlie si^ferings of the ^t^i.

were evideaaesrof 1^^^ «;«« ' « i_

■■■I n wi i^^^aa sias ■■■ toiceaB

of the Ahnigiiiy's i&pleaBDR.

Maay were the twistings and turnings
which the Spirit of revelation allowed the
pious mind of Israel to take on die way

:

OLD TB8TA1CBNT FBBPABATION 77

to the tolutton of this myMery. At one
time the explanation resorted to was, that
the prosperity of the wicked was only
temporary, spreading, great in power, lilce
a green bay-tree, but faUing all the more
ignominiously when suddenly struck widi
the lightning of the divine judgment No
doubt any human experience could supply
mstances of this kind, which might serve
to redress the balance of justice ; but these
were not frequent or notable enough
to establish a theory; and there were
opposite instances, in which the prosperity
of the unrighteous appeared to be lifelong.
In such cases, however, death redressed
the balance— this was the second explana-
tion attempted—the ghosts of his secret
vices surrounded the hypocrite on his
death-bed ; the accusing faces of those he
had wronged tormented his dying hours ;
and he expired in agony of conscience.

78 OLD T1B9TAMBNT PBBPARATION

Of this, too, there were examples, and a
prophet or poet might luiow very striking
ones; but, alasl here again there were
opposite instances, in which the self-satis-
faction of the prosperous wicked never
deserted them, and they had no bands
in their death. StiM one more alternative,
however, might be tried: although the
wicked rich mai^ might die in peace, with
the fabric of his prosperity unshaken, the
revenge of Providence was taken on his
posterity, who, brought up by him in
habits of folly, soon squandered on vice
the property which he had accumulated,
80 that, in a generation or two, his seed
returned to the condition from which he
had sprung, bf this there could, no
doubt, be adduced numerous striking
instances, and ir diis explanation die
mind of the people, groping towards the
light, may long have rested.

OLD TBBTAXBNT PRIPABATION 70

But there were other explanations, and
towards these the unsatisfied intuition was
forced forward Immortality was the
magic word ; for our light affliction which
is but for a moment worketh out for us
a far more exceeding and eternal weight
of glory; but this word the race was
never able distinctly to pronounce till
Jesus Christ brought it to light by His
Gospel. An explanation not so remote
was the sanctifying influence of suffering
on character; and in the Book of
Job and elsewhere it may be seen how
far this was grasped. But there was
still another explanation which the Old
Testament was to reach before it closed,
while the New Testament, at its opening,
was to illustrate it with an incomparable
example. And this touches our subject
to the quick.
Among the prophetic writings there

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» OLD TB8TAHBNT FBlPARATim

Me none more entitled to be ooosidered
ai the blossom mad flower of the whole
than the four passagfes in Isaiah dealing
'wth the Servant of the Loid' About
these there is a literary mystery; for
they seem to be a sqnrate formation
from the strata in which they are em-
bedded, and yet they harmonize wonder-
fiiUy with their surroundings in didr
gmcral elevation of tone. It is also
mysterious why they should be separated
from one another and sprinkled over
the adjacent context, as they have an
obvious internal coherence. Taken
together, they present the features of a
figure which is one of the most wondeiAil
fwdocts of the prophetic spkk Gbvha^
it ie a birth from the pain and travail
of some era of great vicissitude; and
probably the different lays of wlaok k

'hlUBhm. ,^; rik. 1-6; L 4-9. m. t^^ „.

X'-

OLD TESTAMENT PREPARATION 81

is composed embody the experiences of
some deeply exercised servant of God.

The problem is suffering— the suffering
of the righteous— that age-long puzzle
I of the Israelitish mind. AVhy do the

righteous suffer? How can the suffering
of the righteous be reconciled with the
character of a just and holy God? The
reply is an original and profound one.
It is that the sufferer may be suffering
not for his own sins, but for the sins
of others, not for his own good, but for
the good of others.

This is especially brought out in the
last lay. contained in Isaiah Hi. 13-liii. 12,
where there rises to view One whose
visage was so marred more than any
man, and His form more than the
sons of men, yet who sprinkles many
nations and becomes a wonder to those
in whose eyes He had been without

82 OLD TBSTAlfENT PREPARATION

form or comeliness. They had esteemed
His woes and griefs to be the natural
punishment of His sins, "but He was
wounded for our transgressions; He
was bruised for our iniquities; the
chastisement of our peace was upon
Him; and with His stripes we are
healed." As the prophet turns the idea
round and round, it occurs to him that
the position, of the Servant has been
that of the innocent victim substituted
at the altar for the sinful worshipper—
"He is brought as a lamb to the
skughter" — ^and, having once caught
this idea, he develops it fully and closes
with it the whole grand exposition of
his conception—" When thou shalt make
His soul an offering for sin, He shall
see His seed. He shall prolong His days,
and the pleasure of the Lord shall
prosper in His hand; He shall see of

OLD TB8rrAMENT FRBPARAHON 83

the travail of His soul and shall be
satisfied; by His knowledge shall My
righteous Servant justify many : for He
shall bear their iniquities. Therefore
will I divide Him a portion with the
great and He shall divide the spoil
with the strong; because He hath
poured out His soul unto death, and
He was numbered with the transgressors,
and He bare the sin of many, and made
intercession for the transgressors."

The question of the Ethiopian eunuch,
" Of whom speaketh the prophet this—of
himself or of some other man ? " is one
which has agitated the ages and is per-
plexing scholarship to this very hour.
The Jews apply the whole to the suffer-
ings of their own race in both ancient
and modern times; and it ir wonderful
how good a justification they are able
to make out; for the principle is a deeply

84 OLD TBSTABfBNT PREPARATION

hnman one-that the welfare of the many
is bought by the sufferings of the few,
and that the progress of the world is'
^ue to the self-sacrifice of the heroic.
Some apply it to Jeremiah or Zenibbabel,
or to some unknown prophet of the Exilej
and Isaiah could never have expounded
the idea as he has done unless he had
first experienced it in his own person.
There is no reason why so giand a
principle should not have many applica-
tions. But there is One to whose per-
sonal histor/ it applies V.a^ by line and
word by word, so perfectly and naturally
that we are impressed, as we read this
chapter, with the same awe with which
we read His actual history in the final
stages of Gethsemane and Calvary.
Though the most strenuous efforts have
been made to prove that this passage has
no connection with Jesus of Nazareth, or

OLD TESTAMENT PREPARATION 85

that it applies wholly to someone else,
yet the simple truth is, that, while it is
only with an effort that we can think of
it as applying to any other, it all belongs
to Him by native right and title.

And thus at the close of Old Testament
Prophecy we arrive at the very same point
to which we are brought at the end of
the Law: Christ is a victim, and His
death a sacrifice; His soul was given
for the souls of men ; and, through the
sufferings of the innocent, the guilty are
raised to glory, honour, and immortality.

It has sometimes been attempted to
break the force of the argument from
the Old Testament sacrifices, of which
a statement has been attempted in this
lecture, by the observation that these
were offered not for sin as we now
understand the word— in a deeply ethical

86 OLD TESTAMENT PREPARATION

sense— but for ritual uncleannesses. mis-
takes due to ignorance or forgetftilness
and the like, to which we cannot now
attach any importance. So far as there
may be any truth in this, it is an evi-
dence for the antiquity of the rites.
The Uw had to begin as we do with
children ; but it was educating the con-
science all the time; and, as this grew
intelligent and exercised, the sins with
which it occupied itself became more
real ; the prophets deepened the lesson of
the Law, till in a psalm like the fifty-first
we see what was the result of this provi-
dential education. Yet even ]^sus had
to resume the same process; for the
Sermon on the Mount is not at all what
many suppose it-^ code of easy-going
morality— but, on the contrary, a more
stem discipline of the conscience, carry-
ing deeper the work of Uw and Pro-

OLD TBSTAMBNT PREPARATION 87

phecy. Even the Beatitudes are not, as
many suppose, the positive elements of
Christian character, but rather the nega-
tive prerequisites for entrance into the
kingdom of God. They describe, on all
its sides, that chastened, receptive, and
consciously empty state of mind to
which, in religion, everything is given —
not righteousness, but a bottomless
sense of unrighteousness. If these
three chapters near the beginning of
the Gospel of St. Matthew were better
understood, the chapters near the end
which narrate our Lord's passion would
be better understood also. Not only do
multitudes of professing Christians, but
multitudes of Christian teachers and
writers know only a Christianity which
makes the good better, not one that
makes the bad good. This is the
reason why the Atonement is so obscure

«8 OLD TBSTAIUBNT PREPARATION

to them ;mcI that thinker had truth (»
h» «de who remarked that all herewet
-Pring out of an inadequate sense of
«n. "They that a,^ whole have no
need of a physician, but they that ai«
«ck; I came not to caU the righteous,
but smners to lepentance."

THE MODERN JUSTIFIOATION

Ill

THE MODERN JUSTIFICATION

npHE demand has of late been loudly
-^ expressed that all truths professing
to enter into the essence of Christianity
should be capable of statement in terms
comprehensible by all; and it may not
be unreasonable to expect, in addition,
that any truth aspiring to as high a
position as that claimed for the doctrine
of the Atonement should come home to
the intelligence of human beings with a
sense of welcome and gratification. So
great a doctrine ought not to be the

91

M THE MODBBN JUSTIFIOATION

shibboleth of a small sect in a comer,
but ought to impress the general mind
by its majesty, tenderness, and sim-
plicity. It must, nevertheless, be con-
fessed that this doctrine has excited
great hostility, and that, to some who
are undoubted friends of Christian truth
in general, it has a savour which is
foreign, if not * distasteful. This must
excite doubt as to whether the statement
of the doctrine has been just or felici-
tous ; for truth which in itself is divine
and worthy of aU acceptation may
through the tactlessness of its expounders •
be robbed of its legitimate effect and thus
make a false impression. As has been
aheady hinted, the mind of the Church
was late in approaching this subject, and
there still cleaves to its formulation some-
thing of the crudeness and angularity of
the Middle Ages ; but the toU of more

THB MODERN JUSTIFICATION 83

recent thinking has not been in vain,
and the truth is beginning to Lnpress
the minds of men with its native sim-
plicity and force.

The first strong opposition, after the
Reformation, to the orthodox mode of
stating the truth on this subject,''^(*^me
from the Council of Trent;' and it is
curious to note how closely many sub-
sequent attacks, coming from within Pro-
testantism, approximate to the objections
then taken by the Romanist doctors
The point made by the latter was tha
in Protestantism justification by faith was
too isolated from the rest of experience.
Salvation, on God's part, is a whole,
comprising not only justification but
adoption and sanctification ; and, on
man's part, while it includes faith, it
* IS4S to 1563.

W THE MODERN JUSTIFICATION

includes, besides, repentance, love, hope,
and other virtues ; and salvation ought to
be sought as a whole and not in frag-
ments. In reply to this, the Protestants
were able to prove that the forgive-
ness of sins occupies a more command-
ing place in the Scriptures than the
Romanists allowed to it, being made far
more an object of pious desire, which
craves instant satisfaction ; and faith, by
which forgiveness is appropriated, is
sometimes in Scripture spoken of as if
it were the whole of salvation, as in the
great Protestant text : " By grace are ye
saved, through faith ; and that not of
yourselves, it is the gift of God." Much,
however, of this controversy took place
between parties differing too widely in
their religious experiences and beliefs
to be able to find common ground ; for
the Romanists looked upon forgiveness

THE MODERN JU8TIFI0ATI0N 95

as something which had come to them
unawares and as a matter of course in
baptism* whereas to the Reformers it
was the peace which had visited their
awakened consciences, when the terrors
of the Lord were agitating them and
eternal perdition \ ? staring them in the
face.

The generation of the Reformers had
not, however, passed away before, within
Protestantism, there was raised a grave
and commanding voice, making the same
objection, but in a different form and from
a different point of view. The objector
was Osiander, an able preacher of the
Reformation at Nuremburg and sub-
sequently a professor of theology at
Kdnigsberg.' He found fault with the
Protestant doctrine because it separated
justification too far from sanctification,
' Oiiander's date is 1498 to 1553.

W THE MODBBN JUSTIFIOATION

showing, indeed, no necessary link be-
tween the two. People were taught to
believe that, if only they were forgiven,
everything else would follow as a matter
of course : they were inside the covenant,
and, however often they might fall into
sin, they could never fall out of it. Faith
was directed to a single point in Christ's
history— namely, His expiatory death—
and this single act it was to be continually
repeating as long as life lasted. Those
acquainted with the post-Reformation
history of the Lutheran Church wUl be
constrained to confess that in these ex-
ceptions of Osiander there was an element
of truth. In many quarters the great
doctrine of the Reformation had been
deified and was treated as if it were not
only the leading but the only article of the
creed. Any mention of good works was
frowned upon with suspicion as savouring

THE MODBBN JUSTIFIOATION 97

of Romanism. By many theologians of
influence the foUowers of Calvin were de-
nounced as being worse than Romanists,
because they believed in the binding
nature of the Old Testament Law, and
especially of the Decalogue.

The same defect, thus exposed by
Osiander, has continued to recur from
time to time in Protestantism down to
the present day. After seasons of re-
vival particularly, in which many iU-in-
structed people have been awakened and
converted, it is no unusual thing to find
the initial stage of religion regarded as
if it were the whole. Converts go on
repeating the same testimony till it be-
comes nauseous to their hearers as well
as unprofitable to themselves. In the
religion of many there is only one epoch ;
there is no programme of expanding use-
fubess or advancing holiness ; and faith

n± iltnmttmtml O

8

08 THB MODERN JUETFIFICATION

is only the constant repetition of a single
act

Osiander's remedy for this morbid state
was a fuller apprehension of Christ It was
not the work of Christ, or any particular
aspect of that work, he held, which was
the object of faith, but Christ Himself—
not His benefits, but His person. Christ
is not divided): He must be received or
rejected in His entirety. There can be
no doubt that there is a deep truth here.
Jesus Christ is made unto us wisdom
and righteousness and sanctification and
redemption ; in the promises of the Word
of God are set forth different aspects of
the fulness that is in Christ, and it is
by applying itself to these in succession
that faith unfolds all its powers and.
possesses itself ever more fully of the
unsearchable riches of Christ

By faith, Osiander contended, not only

.•'3H'

THE MODERN JUSTIFICATION 90

is the soul justified, but it is united to
Christ; and this union is the antecedent
of justification no less than of sanctifica-
tion. This obviates one of the principal
objections felt by many to the doctrine
of the Atonement To them, it has
seemed as if, when the sinner stood
exposed and condemned in the sight of
God, a third party was brought in, to
assume the responsibility and pay the
debt. But what right had a third party
to do so? How could the imposition of
the debt on him be justified? This is
a serious difficulty; but, if the Saviour
and the sinner are one, through faith, by
a living and personal connection — if they
are one as husband and wife are one —
there is a manifest justification for the
one assuming the responsibilities of the
other. As the riches and poverty of
husband and wife are mutual and they

100 THE MODERN JU8TIFI0ATIQN

cannot be separated in honour or dis«
honour, so do the sins of the sinner
become the Saviour's and the merits of
the Saviour the sinner's not merely by a
rule of law but by a necessity of life. It
is astonishing how, even in the Epistle
to the Romans--the classical passage of
Scripture on our subject— the doctrine
of Atonement < melts into that of union
with Christ The latter is the superior
truth ; and the forgiveness of sins through
faith would not hang isolated in the ex-
perience of Christians if it were seen how
this, like all other blessings of a spiritual
nature, is only an instalment of what is
ours if Christ is ours.

The next movement of thought by
which the Atonement was again brought
to the front was that now known as
Arminianism, which arose in Holland in

THE MODERN JUSTIFIOATION 101

the beginning of the seventeenth centuiy,
and soon spread to other countries. This
was a movement among the followers of
Calvin as the one just referred to had
taken place among those of Luther. If
the doctrine with which the name of
Luther was imperishably associated was
Justification by Faith, the one associated
in the mind of the world with Calvin's
name is Election ; and in the latter case,
as in the former, there had been among
the theologians of a second generation, if
not among the Reformers themselves, a
tendency to exaggeration— to deal with
a single doctrine as if it were the whole
of Christian truth, and to draw the logical
consequences in extreme forms. I am
afraid, it cannot be denied that in Holland,
two or three generations after Calvin's
death, there had come into vogue, in the
pulpits, a kind of preaching which was

102 THE MODBBN JUBTDIOATION

not of a very humane or wholesome
description. Whereas, in the heroic days
of the struggle for civil and religious
liberty in that country, the doctrine of
election had been a symbol for the divine
presence and protection, by which con-
fessors and martyrs had been nerved to
do and dare, it had now become a dogma,
the negative and repellent side of which
was made as prominent as the positive
and comforting, if not more so; timid
souls, instead of listening with delight to
the doctrine of the grace of God, tortured
themselves with curious doubts and ques-
tionings as to whether or not they
belonged to the number of the elect ; and
the free offer of the Gospel itself was
compromised, because every declaration
of its value was followed up with the
warning that only the elect could in the
long run get the benefit of it

THB MODBBN JU8TIFI0ATI0N 108

It wu a logical deduction from this
unnatural way of conttruing a precious
doctrine of Holy Writ, when theologians
went on to limit the Atonement itself,
assuming it to be inevitable, if election
was limited, that the Atonement should
be limited also; for the Son could have
died only for as many as the Father had
chosen from all eternity. Thus there
came into theology the dreariest set of
discussions by which it has ever been
darkened ; the Atonement being reckoned
as a quantitative magnitude ; Christ being
represented as if He had paid the exact
equivalent of the sins of so many persons
and no more ; and the problem thrust
upon thoughtful minds how, then, the
Gospel could be seriously offered to those
for whom no provision had been made.

Undoubtedly there is an ultimate mys-
tery in the relation between the human

i-

104 THE MODIRN JUSIHIOATION

«nd the dMne waii in Mlvttioo. SiOvi.
tion ii of God and Hli putpoM ii erer-
Jwting; iavcd tinnera are aU awara that,
unlets God had diought of ♦hem, they
would never have thought of Him ; we
love Him because He first loved ua. Yet,
on the other hand, the will of man is free ;
it can take or leave God's offer ; and it is
uiged to exert itself as if everything de-
pended on its own energy. How these
opposite points of view can be harmonised
is the question : there are two converging
Hnes which must meet somewhere^ but
their point of union lies beyond human
ken. When, however, there is thus an
antimony of opposite aspects of truth, and
the existence of a mystery somewhere has
to be admitted, it may be by no means
a matter of indifference where exactly the
mystery is located ; and it is cf very great
importaiice that we should not have it

TBI MOmBN JUSnnOATION 106

in two plM«i^ if one wiU da Now, this
nyrtwy of God's win ind num't wiU Uet
inside the doctrine of election. There we
accept it and regird it widi sflent reve-
rence. Not once or twice, but many times,
does the Scripture itself locate it there,
not denying the difficulties thereby occa*
sioned to the intellect, yet, on the whole,
magnifying election as an adorable phase
of redeeming love. But it is surely a
great mistake, after the mystery has been
thus disposed of, to introduce it also into
the doctrine of the Atonement, and o
have the difficulties all over a^mn. This
has no biUical sanction; for the Bible does
not speak of a limitation of the Atone-
ment On the contrary, it says, **God so
loved the worid that He gave His only
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth
in Him should not perish, but have ever-
hsting life"; and I will not call him a

106 THE MODBBN JUBTDIOATION

bold man— for the name he deserves is
a wholly different one — ^who would ven-
ture to modify that glorious statement
with qualifications of his own devising.
In the last Scriptures which proceeded
from the pen of St Paul— the Pastoral
Epistles— strong and frequent testimony
on this point is met with, as if the aged
aposde had dreaded some sophistry by
which the honour of the Gospel was to
be obscured. Thus, in I. Timothy, he
speaks of "God our Saviour, who will
have all men to be saved and to come
unto the knowledge of the truth ; for there
is one God and one Mediator between
God and man, the Man Christ Jesus, who
gave Himself a ransom for all, to be
testified in due time; whereunto I am
ordained a preacher and an aposde (I
speak the truth in Christ a^ lie not),
a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and

THB MODERN JUSTIFIOATION 107

verity." Further on, in the same epistle,
he refers to " the living God, who is the
Saviour of all men, specially of those that
believe." And in the Epistle to Titus,
after exhorting Christians who are ser-
vants, he proceeds : " For the grace of
God that bringeth salvation hath appeared
to all men (the correct translation is, " that
bringeth salvation to all men hath ap-
peared"), teaching us that, denying un-
godliness and worldly lusts, we should
live soberly, righteously and godly in this
present world, looking for that blessed
hope and the glorious appearing of the
great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ,
who gave Himself for us, that He might
redeem us from all iniquity and purify
unto Himself a peculiar people zealous
of good works."

With this tone of sentiment in the
Bible the instinctive voice of the

108 THB MODERN JU8TIFIOATIO|7

pulpit has, when not warped by theo-
logical theory, been in accord, and at
critical moments the Church, when de-
fining doctrine, has been kept true to
the same principles. Thus, in mediaeval
times it was a common phrase of pulpit
rhetoric, that one drop ^^ die blood of
Christ was sufficient to wash out the
sins of the whole world — a phrase which
would command assent if repeated any-
where in the hearing of intelligent
Christians — and this is only a popular
mode of saying what is stated by the
Synod of Dort, that great oracle of
Calvinism, that the death of Christ is
sufficient for all, adapted to all, and
freely offered to all.*
Here is laid the true foundation for

' " Htec mors Filii Dd est unica et perfectissiiiui
pro peccads victima et satisfactio, infiniti valoris et
pretii, abunde sufSciens ad totius mundi peocata
expianda."— Canons of the Synod of Dort, II., 3.

THB MODERN JU8TIFI0ATION 100

a univeraal offer of the Gospel; and

Lord Chancellor Halsbury was only dis-

I^ying his own ignorance when he

expressed the opinion that the free offer

of the Gospel is irreconcilable with

Calvinism. As if not certain, however,

<-> his own judgment as to this, he

bolstered it up with the decisions of

Councils held in the seventeenth century

at Jerusalem and Constantinople — or

rather at Jassy, for what he quoted from

the Council of Constantinople was really

taken from the decrees of a Council

held at Jassy, in Moldavia, an extremely

remote comer of Christendom/ Now,

what were those Councils, and what

was their authority? They arose out of

an attempt to introduce the principles of

' The pusages quoted by the Lord ChanceUor
will be found, in historical setting, in Kimmbl:
" Monumenta Fidei Ecdesic Orientalis," pp. 409,
419.

110 THB MODBRN JUSTIFIOATION

Protestantism into the Eastern Church,
which was made by Cyril Lucar, a
remarkable man, who, after imbibing
the principles of Protestantism, and
especially of Calvinism, in several Euro-
pean countries, which he visited, became
successively Patriarch of Alexandria and
Patriarch of Constantinople, and endea-
voured to introduce reforms into the
Church of his fathers, where they were
sorely needed, as they still are. The
attempt failed, and he, in making it, lost
his life. After his death the Greek
Church condemned his principles, but,
of course, in far greater ignorance of
what these really were than the Romanists
had been, when they condemned the
same doctrines at the Council of Trent.
Yet these are the precious Synods the
decrees of which are evoked to support
a calumny, in consequence of which the

THE MODBBN JU8TIFI0ATI0N 111

United Free Church lost its case in the
courts of law and was denuded of its
property! Had the Lord Chancellor
quoted against us the ill opinion of
some authority notoriously Arminian or
Romanist, everyone would have recog-
nized the futility of the proceeding; but
by appealing to ecclesiastical councils, the
history of which was unknown, he threw
dust in the eyes of the public, and per-
haps deceived himself. Yet the appeal
was as irrelevant as it would be to quote
the resolutions of a parliament of Charles
the Second as judicial deliverances on the
character and administration of Cromwell.

In more recent times no thinker on
our subject is more deserving of atten-
tion than Horace Bushnell,' an American
divine, whose book, entitled "Vicarious
* Bushnell's date is i8oa to 1876.

112 THE MODERN JUSTIFIOATION

Sacrifioe," excited widespread fermetit
first in his own country and then in^
the other English-speaking countries of
the g^obe. Bushnell was a man of
singularly fine spirit, strongly anchored
to the central Christian facts and experi-
ences, yet with an athletic intellectual
curiosity, which would not allow him
to accept traditional formulae without
personal examination or be satisfied
with statements of doctrine unsupported
by present and living experience. The
old orthodoxy of the Pilgrim Fathers
had, in the course of time, fallen asunder
into two sections, the one of which, the
G>ngregationalist, was liberal and friendly^
to theological novelties, but inclining to
Unitarianism, while the other, the Pres-
byterian, was conservative and disposed
to turn upon all novelties a searching
and jealous eye. To the former section

THE MODERN JUSTIFIOATION 113

Bushnell belonged, not only by inheri-
tance, but by the make and bent of his
own spirit He was courageous, original,
and passionately devoted to truth. His
latest biographer' admits that he usually
studied a subject after his book upon
it had been written; the book being
struck off in the first ardour of mental
occupation with the subject, while the
colder and more prolonged study, carried
out in the light of the criticisms evoked
by the publication, not infrequently led
him back to the positions from which
he had diverged; and he was never
lacking in candour to admit a change
of mind. This was the case with his
views on the Atonement, even Dr.
Charles Hodge admitting that, before
the close of the book just named, he
substantially reaffirms the orthodox view,
* T. T. Munger, 1899.

Tfef Motumtnt

9

114 THB MODISBN JU8TIFI0ATI0N

while, in a later work,* he went so iar
in developing a profounder and more
biblical view as to disappoint those who
had hailed his earlier utterance with
enthusiasm but now looked upon him
as having relapsed into . orthodoxy.

The rock of offence which had specially
given occasion to Bushnell's recoil from
the traditional view was a style of
speaking of the Atonement as if it were
a transaction between three separate
parties, the first of whom, God the
Father, was represented as jealously
intent upon His own honour, while the
second, the Son, endured all the pain
of satisfying the law, and the third, the
sinner, bore off all the advantage. Such
a style of expression may have been
prevalent in the preaching and the litera-

« " Forgiveness and Law," written ten year* after
" Vicarious Sacrifice."

THB MODBBN JU8TIFI0ATI0N 116

ture of the section of the American
Church opposed to that repreaented by
Bushnell; at all events it cannot be
denied that it has prevailed widely
enough to call for rebuke ad warning;
and, in administering these, Bushnell
has earned the gratitude of the Church
Universal.

What he insisted on, in opposition to
this habit, was the identity in sentiment
and i..tention between the Father and
the Son. In Scripture the Atonement
is always represented as ihe Father's
work, which the Son undertakes at His
wish and commandment Likewise, the
Son is concerned equally with the Father
in maintaining the integrity of the
divine character and the honour of the
divine law. So far did Bushnell go in
holding that whatever Christ did for
salvation the Father did also, and

110 THB MODBBN JUfimHOATION

especially that whatever the Son suffered
in this interest the Father suffered also,
that he has not infrequently been charged
with reviving the ancient heresy of
Patripassianism ; but it would not be
easy to go too far in affirming the par-
ticipation of the heart of God the Father
in the pain occasioned by the sin of
man or in the sufferings by which this
is overcome; the prophetic writings of
the Old Testament especially abounding
with passages in which such divine emo-
tion is expressed.

It is not, however, inconsistent with
the identity between the Father and the
Son to assume that a special part in
the working out of human redemption
is played by the latter; for, indeed, one
of the principal indications of the exist-
ence of separate Persons in the Trinity
is the habit in Scripture o[ assigning

THB MODBBN JUSTIFIOATION 117

•eporate functions to these in the work
of salvation. If the incarnation is an
experience of the Son alone, there is no
reason why the suffering due to bearing
away the sin of the world should not, in
a special sense, be His also. By the
incarnation He identified Himself with
the human race ; but He identified Him-
self with it far more closely when He
bore its sin ; and it is not unnatural to
believe that on this account the human
race is now different in the Father's eyes.
It is sometimes assumed, indeed, to be
unjust to treat anyone in a special
manner because of what another has
done on his behalf. But is this in har-
mony with human nature? Are we not
constandy doing things for our fellow-
creatures for the sake of others which
we would not do to them for their own
sakes ? Will not the unworthy son of a

118 THB MODBBN JUBTIllOATION

worthy (athtr get a hundred chances
for hit iather's sake to none of which
he it entitled on hit own account? This
hiw of fubttitution abounds in human
affiurs; and it may reach up into the
divine procedure alsa'

If the harmony between the mind
and will of the Father and the experience
of the Son, contended for by Bushnell,
be a fact, it will follow that in the whole
coufM of His earthly life, and especially
ia its bter stages, the Son mu^t ha^
been the object of the Father's supreme
lov« and satisfaction. Of this there is
abundant confirmation in Scripture, and
that the Saviour was conscious of this
Himself was sufficiently demonstrated
when He said: "Therefore doth My

* The statement of this principle in a sermon oa
the Atonement in Mozley's " University Sermons" is
among die acutest modem uttenmcei oo our sid>ject

THB MODBBN J170TIFIOATION 110

Father love Me, because I lay down My
life that 1 might take it again ; no man
taketh it from Me, but I lay it down of
Myself; I have power to lay it down
and I have power to take it again ; this
commandment have I received of My
Father." From this it has been confi-
dently inferred that the sufferings of
Gethsemane and Calvary cannot have
been penal. The Father cannot, it is
argued, have been at the same time
punishing Him and loving Him. But
this may be too rashly reasoned. There
are human analogies, not only conceiv-
able but recorded in actual history and
biography, which point the opposite
way. The Father's approval of the Son
may have been enormously increased just
because the Son was willing to be put
in a relationship to Him so contrary
to His nature as substitution assumes.

lao THE MODERN JUSTIFICATION

This would have produced a mysterious
agony altogrether unique in its character;
and is there not a hint of this in the
voice from the cross, so overawing in
its mystery : « My God, My God, why
hast Thou forsaken Me ? " In the human
conscience, also, there is something
which corresponds : there is a confidence
towards God ^egotten of the assurance
that sin has not only been pardoned
but atoned for, which can never be
produced by forgiveness apart from
penalty.

In all the foregoing instances I am
inclined to recognize valuable modifica-
tions or corrections of the statement of
the doctrine made by Anselm, or of the
popular statements founded on Anselm's ;
but the most interesting development of
speculation in recent times is that which

THE MODERN JUSTIFICATION 121

occurs in t>>e writings of John Macleod
Campbell ad Albrecht Ritschl. I asso-
ciate these two UAtne'^, because between
their views there is a remarkable simi-
larity. The one was a minister of the
Church of Scotland, deposed for heresy in
1 83 1, and the other a German professor,^
who died at Gdttingen in 1889. As far
as I remember, the one never quotes
the other ; and there is an extraordinary
contrast between their equipment and
methods, Macleod Campbell being a
singular instance of literary helplessness,
his few ideas shining, like jewels among
rubbish, from amidst wide spaces of
confusion and irrelevancy, while Ritschl
advances armed to the teeth with learn-
ing, and is able to make ideas from a hun-
dred quarters converge upon the point at
issue. Nevertheless, the Scottish thinker,
in spite of his awkwardness, perhaps

122 THE MODERN JUSTIPICATION

comes nearer to the heart of the subject,
as he certainly gets far nearer to the
heart of the reader, who recognizes
ever)rwhere in his writings the presence
of a refined and saintly personality.
Both writers practically eliminate what
is most distinctively associated with
Atonement in both the Old and the
New Testaments. Both appear to have
been comparatively insensible to the
element in sin which we call guilt, and,
therefore, they were also unsympathetic to
the process by which this is put away.
Yet both are profoundly interested in
the more positive constituents of salva-
tion ; and in Ritschl's great work, which,
in spite of the limitation of its title,
really ranges over the entire field of
theology, by for the most original and
vital portion is, in my humble opinion,
that which has to do with Christian

THE MODBBN JUSTIFIGATION 123

Ethics. Both writers, while, as has
been said, practically abandoning the
Bible doctrine of Atonement, give the
name of Atonement to those elements
of salvation which they do recognize;
they obliterate the distinction between
justification and sanctification, and treat^
terms as equivalent, which, in exact
theology, have been always treated as
distinct. Such retention of theological
terms, while their native significance is
forgotten or exchanged for something
else, has always been a habit of the
Broad Church. I remember hearing
the late Dean Stanley preach on a
great text in which the phrase, "the
blood of Christ " occurred, when, after
explaining, in two or three sentences at
the outset, that the blood of Christ was
equivalent to the love of Christ, he
proceeded to expatiate with fluency and

124 THE MODERN JUSTIFIOATION

fervour on the love of Christ without
making any further allusion to the
solemn phrase of his text.

In both Madeod Campbell and Ritschl
the dominant idea under which every-
thing else is subsumed is the Fatherhood
of God, and it is by the fascination of
this true and attractive idea that the
former teacher has won so select a
following and exerted so intensive an
influence. This doctrine, which has for
its implicate the Brotherhood of man,
they look upon not only as the peculiar
message of Jesus, but as the ultimate
revelation of God and of His relation
to the human race. According to Mac-
leod Campbell the traditional doctrine
of Atonement is founded upon belief
in God as the Ruler and Judge of
men ; but this, he contends, is the inferior
revelation of the Old Testament, and

THE MODBBN JUBTDIOATION 126

cannot dominate the procedure of God
as He is revealed in Christ: a father's
dealing with his children being very
different from that of a king with his
subjects.

It may be questioned, however, whether
this characterization of the Old Testa-
ment, which reappears so frequently in
popular religious literature of a certain
type, is just ; for, all through the Old
Testament, there goes a representation
of the divine character and action much
more nearly approximating to that of
the New Testament — namely, that of God
as Husband to His people. "Thy
Maker is thine Husband," says Isaiah;
"Turn, O backsliding children, for I
am married unto you," is the language
of Jeremiah; in an emotional prophet
like Hosea this idea is developed with
astonishing freedom; and, in the Bible

126 THB HODBBN JUBTIFIOATION

generally, idolatry appears as conjugal
unfaithfulness. With neither this idea
nor that of divine Fatherhood is that
of Ruler and Judge inconsistent : on the.
contrary, it embodies permanent relation-
ships, which can never be without in-
fluence on the divine procedure; but
these two kinds of love, attributed to
God in the Qld and the New Testa-
ments respectively, will, if closely
studied, lead further into the mystery
of the divine procedure than the con-
trast emphasized by the scholars in
question.

The love of God can only be under-
stood by the love of man; and, the ampler
anyone's experience of the latter, the
juster will be his comprehension of the
former. Human love is really a common
name for a great vari^^ty of experiences,
some of which are extremely unlike one

THE MODBBN JUSnFIOATION 127

another. Among these may be distin-
guished a love which is free and a love
which is bound. Of the former wedded
love is the most prominent example, be-
cause in it there is a free choice on both
sides, and it is dissoluble in the event of
divorce; while of the latter the most
conspicuous example is parental love : a
father has no choice whether or not he
will love his children, and no conduct on
the part of a child can dissolve the rela-
tionship.

In the history of our religion it was the
free relation that came first Israel lived
in a connection with Jehovah which was
free and dissoluble. That is, it was
morally conditioned. Israel was assured
of the favour and protection of the Holy
God only as long as it kept His command-
ments. Very different was the relation of
the surrounding nations to their deities:

128 THE MODBBN JUSTIFIOATION

the gods of the Philistines, Moabites and
Ammonites were bound to assist their
worshippers in battle and stand by them
in other emergencies unconditionally on
all occasions. By the false prophets in
Israel the attempt was often made to put
the relation to Jehovah on the Same foot-
ing: thus, in the days of Jeremiah, for
example, they taught the inviolability of
Jerusalem in spite of the guilt of the
nation. This made it necessary for
Jeremiah, in opposition to such deceivers,
to reiterate that the covenant with
Jehovah had been broken, and to fore-
tell that, in consequence, the assistance of
Jehovah would no longer be forthcoming.
The ethical nature of this relationship
between Deity and worshippers is at pre-
sent recognized by all deeper students of
the history of Israel as the germ of all that
separated that race from the heathen and

THB MODERN JUSTIFICATION 120

made it the prophet of holiness to the rest
of the world.

Nevertheless, this truth proved capable,
like every tmth, of being abused ; and in
the days of Jesus it had been converted
into falsehood and cruelty. The Phari-
sees, secure in their own consciousness of
keeping the Law and of, therefore, being
entitled to the favour and gifts of the
Almighty, looked upon the publicans and
sinners as persons who had completely
broken the covenant with Jehovah and
thereby exposed themselves to the indigna-
tion and resentment of the Deity as well as
the contempt and hatred of all good men.
These sentiments they expected Jesus, as
a pretender to holiness, to share. But, in
reply, Jesus taught that there is another
relation between God and man besides
that free and dissoluble one : God is the
Father; and it does not become a father

180 THB MODTON JUBTIFIOATIOll

to cease to love, however undeserving or
wretched the child may be : on the con-
trary, the more lost the prodigal is, the
deeper is the dtsidtrium in the father's
heart. This is the burden of all the
parables of the fifteenth of St. Luke.

Such was the origin of our Lord's
doctrine of the Fatherhood of God, the
originality and significance of which it
would not be easy to exaggerate. Never-
theless, this doctrine was not intended to
blot out the earlier conception, in which
there are elements of permanent value.
The jealousy of the husband for the
purity of the wife cannot be lost without
the fabric of society crumbling away, and
its equivalent in the religious sphere is
the commandment, " Be ye holy, for I am
holy."» Besides, the mutual choice in-

» I have heard the late Professor Domer say with
a blush, half indignaticm half sbaaae, oo his sensitive

THE MODERN JU8TIFI0ATI0N 181

volved in the marriage relationship is a
fact of endless religious significance. If
it be insisted that only one of these two
great conceptions can be accepted as
the ruling idea of Christian theology,
the question may arise which of the
two relationships — that of father and
child or that of husband and wife — is, in
its own nature, the more subtle, deep and
comprehensive, and, therefore, the better
fitted to shadow forth the relationship
between God and man, between Christ
and the soul ; and this everyone can

face, and amidst a deathlike silence in his classroom,
that a loye which gives itself utterly and absolutely
away, without respect to anything, even to character,
is the love not of God but of a harlot. His con-
struction of the justice of God as the internal
cohesion of love — that is, its determination to con-
tmue itself, even when giving itself away — ^is one of
the finest efforts of speculation in modem theology,
and it bears directly on our subject. See the first
volume of his Dogmatics.

182 THB MODBBN JUSTIFIOATION

decide for himielf. But unity of con-
ception is not only the guide but often
also the temptation of speculative theolo-
gians ; and the varieties of love which
the human heart can experience, even
towards the same persons, ought to warn
us against placing limits on the love
divine. So that, even if the ideas enter-
ing into the Atonement are not much
suggested by the Fatherhood of God, it
does not follow that they do not belong
to Gospel truth or even to the truth
found in the Gospels ; for the Old Testa-
ment conception reappears in the New
Test^iment not only in St. John's imagery
about the Bride of the Lamb, and in St
Paul's great passage on marriage, where
the relation of Christ and the Church is
compared to tliat of bridegroom and
bride, but likewise in our Lord's own
pu-able of the King who made a^ Marriage

THB MODBBN JUSTIFICATION 188

for hit son, as well ai in His revival of
the covenant-conception when instituting
the Last Supper.'

At all events the New Testament con-
ception is no more safe than was the Old
Testament one from misuse. Some have
pressed the idea of fatherhood so far as
to admit of no punishment for sin except
such as is of the most mild and disciplinary
order, any mention of everlasting punish-
ment being scouted as utterly out of the
question. Now, what is this but a return
to the old heathen notion, that a god
must fight for his worshippers in all
circumstances, or to that of the false
prophets, that Zion was inviolable, what-
ever its guilt?

I cannot say that the other idea with

Mt 18 a pity that in the narratiye of the Last
Sui^per the word "testament" is used instead of
"covenf it"

*

184 THE MODBBN JUBTIFIOATION

which Ritschl principally operates — ^that
of the Kingdom of God — appears to me
to have much bearing on our subject;
and, indeed, I question whether the
attempt to resuscitate this phrase is a
happy one. I incline rather to think
that its use was imposed on Jesus by
circumstances; and it is certain that His
followers had 4i'opped it even before the
close of the New Testament. But there
is one idea of Macleod Campbell's to
which I should like, before closing, to
pay the tribute of a more cordial recog-
nition— the one idea, it seems to me,
not only of originality and genius, but
cf truth, contained in a book which has
been both unduly lauded by its friends
and unwisely attacked by its foes. Mak-
ing, for the sake of argument, the
supposition that all the sins of all the
sons of men had been committed by

THE MODBBN JUSMPICATION 135

one man, he demands whether, if diis
man had thoroughly repented, he would
not have been forgiven. Undoubtedly
he would; and this may be a hint of
what the Atonement of Christ really
was. Christ's profound sense of the sin
of all men, His identification of Himself
with the race by whose members it
had all been committed, and the pain
He suffered in consequence — ^these un-
doubtedly formed a large element in
His Atonement Not only so ; but His
Atonement reconciles because it produces
repentance in others. The contrition
characteristic of Christianity has been
produced in sinners by looking on Him
whom they have pierced; it cannot be
produced in any other way ; and it is
not by depleting the death of Christ of
its m3rstery and solemnity, but by preach-
ing it as a revelation of the nature of

186 THB MODlBBN JUSTIFIOiLTION

an as well as of the power of redeeming
love, that hard hearts will be broken
and sinliil men and women led to abhor
their evil past and to climb with alacrity
and hope the white heights of holiness.

We know from our own experience
how difficult it may sometimes be to
forgive; and the difficulty is greatest,
not when the mind is possessed with
personal resentment, but when its indig-
nation is stirred by an outrage upon that
impersonal law of the universe which it
must be the office of the Deity to con-
serve and defend. Yet, when genuine
contrition is shown, the righteous wrath
of the soul is appeased, and the offender is
taken back with a warmth and an interest
never felt for him before he had sinned.

Repentance is a most interpretative
word, combining both the reconciliation
of God to man and the reconciliation

THE MODERN JUSTIFIOATION 137

of man to God, as a true doctrine of
Atonement must. God is reconciled
when Christ offers, on behalf of the
race, a representative and universal
repentance, which literally breaks His
heart, so that He dies of it. This takes
us so far into His actual experiences
that here, if anywhere, we cpoture the
heart of the mystery, though it remains
a mystery still. On the other hand, man
is reconciled when he makes Christ's act
on the cross his own, repenting of his
own sin, but doing so with a depth and
thoroughness only to be learned from
the mind and example of Christ And
here commences the new life of victory
over self and over the worid, which,
while it may derive some of its rules
from Mount Sinai or even from Mars
Hill, must ever continue to imbibe at
Calvary the spirit of humility and grati-

\

118 T£Qi MOfinni jiMMpntiATioN

dkb wfaidi ill tiM oalqti and miaring
quality of Christiaii hdiaen.

This may seem to put aside feodinaeh
the notion of penalty ; but, surely, kf be
assigned by the Father a rSU in irfifek
He was to lose His life amidst not oiaif
agony of body but forsakenness of aovl
was, for Jesus, to be numbered with ^
transgressors ; , and, unless we are to
abandon altogether the attempt to under'
stand His sufferings, there is oo&iiig
with which these can be so well con-
pared as the experience of an awakeaed
conscience. The virtue of this mode of
conceiving the Atonement is that, at
many points, it is touched by pttdomM.
and tender human analogies ; and, I
persuaded, it is along this line dial ^
reconciliation of the modern mind iwj^
a doctrine at which it has often stumbled
must be endeavoured.

mnrw BROTBBiis, uiuno, thk oiubaii

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